As long as they’re running on the same tracks as freight, that’s always going to be the case.
The Northeast Corridor (where the Acela runs) is owned by Amtrak and is not shared with freight. It’s the track curves that are the problem. This is some of the oldest right of way in the US.
For anyone who doesn’t know, freight trains make a lot more money and will illegally take the right of way over passenger trains and just pay the fines. This happened to me on my first and last train ride in the last decade. Waited over an hour on the tracks as the angry conductor explained the situation.
What? In US the right of way is decided by the trains, not infrastructure dispatchers? What you described sound like the freight trains just commonly run through the stop signal which is a BIG NO-NO.
Legally passenger rail has the right of way, but reality can turn that around.
- freight isn’t always scheduled, but “when full”, so it’s tough to coordinate
- freight can be slow so owners have no incentive to keep the track in good condition, slowing everyone
- freight is infrequent so no need to parallel rails: many places have only maintained one track, so how can a faster train pass?
- freight trains have gotten longer, outgrowing many sidings, so there are fewer places they can pull over to let faster trains pass
Each of these is quite legal, and even normal to some extent, but adds up to huge delays and unpredictable schedules for passenger rail
NOTE: this is also one cause for our unacceptable levels of accidents. As freight trains get slower and longer they block at grade intersections for unacceptable lengths of time. As they’ve gotten longer without updating sidings and rail yards to match, there are too many cases of trains stopped blocking at grade intersections. Too many drivers frustrated by too many delays tempts some to cross the tracks when it’s not safe, with predictable results.
This is why America will never compete with places like japan or China because they build dedicated rail for their transport networks.
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Amtrak has a bunch of infrastructure improvements that will make a bt of difference but they’re too limited. We have over a century of deferred maintenance on the rails.
It doesn’t matter how fast the train sets can go, when your limited by infrastructure like this
Gotta love those rails. That are more like wet spaghetti. No idea how they can ride on them at all.
“State of the art” mhmm
Sadly, the art is “Impressionism”
Serious question, why doesn’t Amtrak just build its own tracks so they don’t have to deal with the freight companies?
Prohibitive cost?
As long as certain people expect Amtrak to be profitable, and we’re not willing to invest in fixing a century of deferred maintenance, how can we possible dig out of this hole?
My hope is in state supported routes, although they’re too limited won’t be fast or comprehensive. For example New Hampshire is not a place you’d find enough people to build profitable high speed rail. However they own control some existing track given up by freight rail. In particular I understand there’s a track to Manchester that connects to a track in use by MBTA commuter rail, and they’re considering rail service between Boston and the capital, including the airport. I don’t know if it will happen, but it would only be because of the state.
A lot of investments from the infrastructure act were to study state supported routes and how to add them to the Amtrak network. This is a big deal, because rail is so much more useful when added to a network. We’re stuck at the beginning where each project is considered for only its own merits, and need to build to the point where they can also be considered for the overall network
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They’re French trains, the only problem with the rolling stock is that it took them so long to get them into service
I really wish America had faster trains like Europe
